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Our place of residence, impregnable in its distinctly castle-like walls, lies a few hundred meters from the main road (which is the only paved road in the town), beginning at the airport and leading through the town before heading south. In between the road and our compound is an old dirt soccer field where locals and AU military soldiers practice in the afternoons. Directly across from us is a dilapidated stadium. When I first arrived, horse races occurred at this stadium on Fridays (which was an experience in itself, the Darfur horse gallantly galloping in constant circles on a miniature horse track built more the size of a soccer pitch). In the past I have used this stadium as sanctity for exercise. To my surprise, the run-down stadium has recently undergone major renovations, turning it into a real place for sporting.

Before the renovation, when entering I would pass an old man camped in the shade who spent his days and nights methodically weaving old scraps of cloth into braided rope to sell. Slouching over his work, wearing the same traditional white local dress and a thousand wrinkles, he always grumbled a mellow hello to me in Arabic. I returned the greeting as I walked by, thinking about the distinct clash between his clothing and mine, a sleeveless bright red Coca-Cola running shirt and New Balance tennis shoes. For some reason to me he epitomizes Darfur, living through a storied history, being pushed out of a once prosperous profession, and now barely skimming a living off homemade rope.

It was in this stadium that I (occasionally) ran late afternoon laps, dodging the donkey-doo, stray goats, overgrowth in the rocky dirt path and using the five or six stadium steps for ‘bleacher training’.

About the time I returned from my last leave in June, I noticed the town started cleaning up the place. I was uncertain why, other than I heard soccer games would soon be played. Grass was planted and frequently watered (not an easy commodity to come by). Two weeks ago, an uncanny amount of people joined in the effort and built higher walls, evenly surrounding the stadium. They built an inner fence around the field, added new concrete seating, a curiously local VIP area, and even painted the place white. (Painting everything white in the desert is an anomaly to me. Of course white is cooler, but it also attracts the orange-brown dust which immediately stains and ruins the newness (a look Hollywood tries to mimic when creating authentic ancient Middle East backdrops.) To top off the renovation, four giant light towers were set up for night events. It was eye opening to see so much work occur here in such a short period of time. The stadium underwent a huge transformation in just 10 days. Why? Who was paying for it?

I soon found out that Sudan’s President Bashir was scheduled to visit my town of El Fasher. All this work was a part of a monetary advance he gave the community to spruce up the place before he arrived. He was coming to speak as a part of a ceremony opening the newly renovated stadium. No doubt the timely donations would be used as leverage, claiming Khartoum actually does contribute money into the region.

Inside the Stadium sitting in the Sudanese Style VIP Seating

The procession leading up to his arrival and speech was busy. The stadium is, like I said, right across from our housing compound. By 3pm in the afternoon, the stadium was packed with people and the entire area was flooded with interested parties and military police and special Sudan Forces (who wore red bandanas as an accessory to their desert camo -symbolizing their commitment to die for the president). We were all convoyed back into our compound and told not to leave, the gates locked tight.

We instead climbed the inside of our compound walls and sat on sea containers, peaking over as people, horses, and vehicles lined the dirt road that the president and his entourage would soon come down.

We watched as cars paraded past with giant bullhorns resting on the hoods repetitively blaring “Allah is great”. Animal skin drums were rhythmically pounded by locals in the back of trucks and locals carried political signs. Ornately decorated camels in the brightest of colors strutted past carrying covered thrones. I’m told this type of flair is only showcased by the Janjaweed tribe members. It is typically used in wedding ceremonies where the bride is ‘introduced’ to her new groom. Various tribes’ colors were also worn by groups of women who were ceremoniously dancing.

One of our Sudanese staff told a story about how the president enjoys dancing in the local ceremonies. Before one of his speeches he joined in dancing with a crowd of tribal women. As it livened, he reached over to grab one of his body guard’s guns and fire it off into the air in celebration. As he raised up the gun he shot too soon and accidentally hit and killed one of the dancing women. This, while he was president of this crazy country. A quick $10,000 apology payment and he was cleared from the ‘accident’.

One of the interesting things about the scene was the motivation of the crowd. I’ve mentioned it was diverse and lively. But in reality the people of El Fasher and most in Darfur actually dislike the president. I don’t need to reiterate why. Most of the people at this event were either Janjaweed, students, curious, or simply paid by the government to attend.

As we sat and looked out into the crowd, the people took a fascination at looking at us through our razor wire and gates. Some would wave and others would stare, but we felt like true caged animals as curious eyes gazed from the outside in.
About 30 minutes before the president arrived, we were told by the event police to get down from our perch inside our compound as it posed a security threat. I wasn’t sure if he was referring to us or the president but I guessed the latter, as the guard later came over to invite us as a group into a special area reserved for us in the stadium.

Probably not a good idea to be a group of westerners trapped inside a stadium if demonstrations occurred or if we were singled out by the president or a rogue anti-westerner, so we declined the invite.

The president finally arrived, entered the stadium, and spoke to the crowd, asserting in an Arabic diatribe the lies told by the western world, typically making promises and spinning truths. (He had the gall to announce to the people of Darfur that peace has come into the region.)

Overall, it was an entertaining change from our normal routine. And it opened up a stadium where we can now watch daily soccer matches and run in a nicer place. Thank you President Bashir. Isn’t it the little things that are supposed to make a difference?

I just wonder what happened to the old rope-making man who used to reside at the stadium. He is nowhere to be seen.

Ahh…the perils of keeping up with a responsibility. The problem with staying focused about writing on a blog is that in order for the site to remain active and healthy, your commitment to it needs to be near the top of your priorities and thought, all the time. To keep a successful blog, particularly one about a narrowed topic, looking for information to add value to it has to be constant. Over time, there are the obvious obstacles: overexposure, lack of interest, censorship, and the occasional appropriateness of publishing something personal to a world-wide audience.

Some say, “Matt, just write about your normal life. Just say hey”. But life out here isn’t always exciting and I don’t always have something interesting to post about my personal life. To compensate, I’ve mixed in the political situation and economic impact and regional nuisances and so forth.

Eventually, I wrote a few posts which may have drawn the line with political correctness, especially in relation to our client, which were censored by my higher-ups. I wrote several  posts about the business of peacekeeping, which I found interesting because this type of work has a lot of ironies, but they too could cross the line of telling “business secrets” or drawing the wrong attention to our real mission, so I didn’t publish.

I’ve saved all these writings and maybe one day I’ll be able to publish them in a more non-professional setting when I’m far removed. But the fact is the readership has developed over the course of my 20 months here and I’m not just writing to my friends and family anymore.

That’s not a bad thing, but the pressure is somewhat different. I’ve had comments ranging from, “Shut your blog down now!” to “My client wants to advertise on your site. What are your rates?”

I think I’m going to revert back to writing to my friends and family and see where it leads. I’m aiming to make it a responsibility I enjoy rather than a crutch of censorship and writers block.

I’ll restart by posting a few pics as this is one aspect I’ve always avoided for no good reason. I think I’ve relied on my writing to conjure up the imagination, but images always serve the audience well. If you revisit at the previous post below, I’ve added picture enhancers, as well as a few on this post with some inscriptions to get you back into the swing of things about the world I share in Africa. Enjoy.

Pics from the Market

I’ve been in Khartoum a few days and plan to be for several more weeks filling an open position we need staffed. I’ve been reading alot about the growth of Khartoum into a robust and growing capital city. I’d like to give you my understanding of the cause and effects of this growth, as it’s fascinating to witness how it’s happening.

There is no doubt that Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. I’ve seen numbers that direct foreign investment has shot up from $128mn in 2000 to $2.3bn this year in Khartoum. Because of Sudan’s stance of harboring terrorists, sanctions were placed in 1997 on direct foreign investment from the US and other western countries. As the numbers show, this hasn’t deterred Asian and other Middle Eastern investment in Sudan, resulting in a booming local economy with its corresponding imports of products and expats. It looks like the only losers were the countries which enforced the sanctions, as they have been left out of the growth.

I highly recommend this quick video by the NY Times, Khartoum Propers Despite Sanctions, as it gives you an idea about the bittersweet feeling of polar lifestyles in this country. Back when I imagined what Sudan looked like before I came, I visualized the National Geographic scenes of poor people with buzzing flies sitting in huts and tending livestock in remote desertic areas. Maybe in the war zones you’d see an armed and camouflaged rebel, all images of disparate and colorful extreme. Sadly, this is a correct visualization. But the 5 minute movie by NY Times, as well as this article, War in Sudan? Not where the Oil Flows, begins to show the extremes of the prosperous and growing capital city versus the stagnantly poor rest of the country.

You can attribute Khartoum’s growth to Sudan’s president, Bashir. He has done wonders in ignoring western sanctions and building an economy in Khartoum with phenomenal growth. Unfortunately, the rest of the country has been ignored. In fact, this unequal growth is the primary reason for the rebellions in the East, South and West.

The East, until just recently, was in border battles with Eritrea and Ethiopia. The South is still struggling to rebuild itself afterresource sharing battles with the Khartoum government. And Darfur is still considered the Wild Wild West and completely ignored with regard to any infrastructure development and resource sharing. It’s almost as if Bashir is content in building up the bubble around him while the rest of the country suffers.

The impact of the growth in Khartoum is that Sudanese and other expats are gladly returning to the country. As Stated on The Sudanese Thinker -

“The slowly returning Sudanese Diaspora in Khartoum is bringing along with it tons of money and lifestyles foreign to Sudanese culture. Much of those lifestyles present a huge opportunity for business people. The consumer market is big and investors are pouring money into it while in the process reaping back big profits. People have extra money to spend on leisure and entertainment. They want to be able to live the same lifestyle they had back in America, London, Europe or Dubai. They want to be pampered. The demand is high but the supply is low. Ozone Cafe (featured in the video) is just one of those things that the returning Sudanese Diaspora wanted but couldn’t find. It’s one of many expensive hang out places and shisha bars mushrooming everywhere catering to the privileged Sudanese in the capital and also the increasingly big number of foreigners there. 10 years ago, a Chinese man walking around Khartoum would have been like a giraffe roaming around Antarctica. Now there are foreigners everywhere in the capital. This also presents a big potential market for business people. We’ve got our own mini China-town now for God’s sake people and it’s expanding steadily!

One of the signs of Khartoum’s boom has been development of the land which brings the White and Blue Nile together. The infrastructural investment on this peninsula will be groundbreaking for this economy. Due to be finished in several years, called the al-Sunut, projects taking place include shopping malls, luxury hotels, spas, office towers, Sudan’s first golf course, and villas with swimming pools along the Nile among others.

This development is surely misleading and a bittersweet feeling for the overall economy nationwide. It’s a sign that Khartoum is a thriving capital city and global player. But this isn’t Sudan. It masks the chronic problems, the genocide, the poverty, the national geographic images that stereotype the country which are still taking place outside of Khartoum.

Sudan has about 30 million people. 5 million of those reside in Khartoum. That means 25 million, or 5/6th of its total population are still living in these impoverished conditions. And even in Khartoum, only a tiny fraction of its population would be able to utilize the luxuries that al Sunut and other development like it is providing.

It’s an interesting growth, and China is the catalyst behind most of it. On the markets you see mostly Chinese and Asian products. I read a funny story recently about when the Koreans arrived in Khartoum all of the stray dogs disappeared. Dog is an alleged delicacy in Korea. So this Sudanese guy saw a van full of Koreans race by, then stop suddenly in front of him where two of them jumped out, grabbed a stray dog off the street, threw it in the back of the van, and then raced off. He was eternally grateful to the Koreans for this very reason. You do not have the nuisance of stray dogs here in Khartoum, whereas out in the bush, they’re everywhere.

Asia, and China specifically, has played a major role in direct foreign investment in Khartoum. Sudan has multibillion-dollar contracts with the Chinese state-run oil companies CNPC and Sinopec which operate in Sudan. Oil and other business and land development investments have proven to be both lucrative and essential to sustaining the Chinese economy. China is basically the big daddy of Sudan’s growth and its influence is apparent everywhere.

The West has tried to exploit this relationship, having struggled with Sudan diplomacy themselves. The US has put diplomatic pressure on China to help influence Khartoum to better stabilize the rest of the country, but China seems to weasel past the requests, claiming it will never be a “tool for US pressure on Sudan”, showing only self interest in its large investments in Sudan and carrying little to no globally minded responsibility. China believes no government “should interfere with other country’s human rights and internal affairs”…..damn that ideological baggage.

So you won’t see China sacrificing oil rights or potential profit for a good cause. And because of Sudan’s large oil reserves and China’s rampant population and requirement for this oil, I would imagine very few things would warrant the cause for a rift in their partnership.

But of course, stable regions do booster sound investments so it is in China’s interest to help Sudan.

They have recently signed several agreements of an economic and technological nature, implementing two schools in the rural areas in Sudan and another one for establishment of a centre for agricultural technology, which is a step in the right direction, but a far cry from the assistance that’s really needed to stabilize the country outside of Khartoum. (Did I mention the agreement included a bonus “Thank You” Presidential Palace for Bashir, built and paid for by the Chinese government?)

Chinese president Mr. Hu is sneaky in answering criticism regarding his relationship with Khartoum. He’ll say things like “Beijing is trying to help Africa to build infrastructure and alleviate poverty.” At one point, China had said their solution to Darfur would be to replace the struggling African Union with its own Chinese Peacekeepers.

This initial thought is slightly concerning because China is strategically aligned with the Khartoum Government (who directly supports the campaign of ethic cleansing in Darfur). So, if this proposal were to occur, we would see the possibility of having politically motivated troops (for the wrong side mind you), leading an allegedly neutral peacekeeping mission. That could spell further disaster. Thankfully it has not materialized and the focused solution is still on UN oversight of African troops.

Anyway, what I’ve learned from reading about this place and other African leaders is that Sudan’s President, Al Bashir, is a remarkable man. He’s hardly selfless and far from an altruistic president. But he’s extremely effective at retaining power and leading his people (the arabs mind you, not the blacks) to believe in his plight. During his tenure, he has centralized his power and financial freedom by turning Khartoum into a global player and economic force. He’s allied and partnered with powerful and dark countries that will turn their head in response to his blatant neglect of human rights issues and exploitation of ethic differences in all other regions outside of Khartoum. And he’s successfully allowed a (alledged) genocidal campaign and umpteen wars to take place under the noses of the entire international community through whippy deflections of responsibility and smoke and mirror campaigns.

There are established techniques that African leaders use to retain power. Bashir follows these to a tee, and has an even stronger advantage with a good supply of natural resources as leverage. It’s amazing to think that this kind of stuff can take place. It’s amazing to see the effects of his methods, Khartoum’s growth, Chinese influence, regional poverty, and genocide, among others, as you live in this place.

Yep…my eyes are wide open in witness. And that’s about all I have to say.

So last year my birthday celebration in this place of wonder was minor….a toast with peeps. This year I told one or two folks and it turned into a multi-day affair. Last night we had a BBQ. I brought out the S. Texas Deer sausage I smuggled in…full of mold at this point…but nothing a little water and an old tooth brush couldn’t scrape off. We of course had the imported ‘Johnny Walter’ bagged whiskey, and the Russian pilots offered the Jalapeño infused vodka, colored brown, which turned out to be a late night party killer, tasting as bad as it sounds. The second round for most was thrown over the shoulder rather than down the hatch. The folks from Zimbabwe cooked ‘fried hamburgers’, something you must try once or five times, and mixed drinks with whatever we had, including coke and locally brewed Red Hibiscus Tea. As the night drew on, people began dancing with the stars and we caught a gem of one of our employees and myself on video…youtube… for which I hope you click on and can get a kick out of.

Yes, this go around’s theme needs to be exercise and diet but it’s a birthday so I’ll indulge.

Today brought on the B-day lunch, where locally cooked pizza was served with leftovers from the previous day’s BBQ along with spicy pasta. A cake was discovered locally, where a little flair was included. The medics were short on candles, instead opting for tongue compressors, wrapped in lighter fluid soaked cotton swabs. They brought the cake out singing grand but I didn’t notice the song because the cake was literally on fire that took me several minutes of breath to blow out. The first pic didn’t turn out, so we tried again after eating half the cake with q-tips this time, result below.

Overall, it was excellent birthday in the bush…28 strong…here’s to something new every year with good people who make it worthwhile!

I spent the rest of my break hopping cities through Texas and back to NY and DC. It was a whirlwind tour which was a much needed break from the grind of Sudan but probably too long. This is my last leg on the tour as I’m planning to end in May and I expect it to be another challenge.

Texas was fulfilling. Between trips to San Antonio, Austin, and Corpus Christi, time flew, but I enjoyed hashing it out with friends and family. I had an excellent day in Austin where I played a muddy, wet, and cold football match with 16 of my college buddies followed by a night of debauchery.

In San Antonio, I caught my favorite musician, Bob Schneider, live at Floores, the most authentic Texas bar I’ve run across. I saw my team, the Horns, win sloppy at the Alamo Bowl and had a good X-Mas night party with the friends.

In Corpus I caught up with the family, laughing over Christmas gifts, defending my travels, and generally recharging my roots, a time I look forward to every year.

New Years was spent in New York. I did not go to Times Square, as battling the crowds did not warrant the check mark of been there, done that over new years, but I had a good time chatting and people watching over free booze at a private party none-the-less.

The next day was sort of surreal in that it was chilly but not cold and a dreary mist covered the city, blanketing Manhatten with an eerie silence as most people huddled on the first day of the new year indoors. Despite the silence, walking through West Village and Soho alongside my friends spoke volumes to me. There was no traffic, no city noise, and no pedestrians out as we treaded past still green trees gripping the resident streets and independent shops closed for the holiday. I couldn’t help but think that during this unique moment, the four of us slowly meandering down the middle of the cobble stone, bs’ing about nothing, the city was ours alone to enjoy. I’ve felt a lot of things in NY but never silence. It’s almost as if we were privy to a rare and lonely vulnerability of the city.

New Years night began hot because we were trying to smuggle five people into a four person taxi and my job was to distract the driver with conversation as we fit the 5th inside. I jumped in and immediately looked at the driver and asked the basic, overused, apparently inappropriate question of “Where are you from?”, noticing he was black with an African accent, thinking I could find a common ground for distraction. He flipped out and immediately became offended, saying he was from the Bronx and why do I care where he’s from and would I even know geographically if he answered the question? I told him I worked in Africa and cared about the place and was curious about accents, etc etc trying to both strike a real conversation and distract at the same time.

I was bombarded with a 15 minute lecture of the ignorance of the American public and how he and other NYC taxi drivers from the continent find it offensive for passengers to pretend to understand or relate to his motherland or background based on movies and news.

The sheep in the backseat ineffectively suppressed their laughter at the abuse I was taking. Whatever, my job was done.

On that note, in DC I caught up on the new African movie flicks, Blood Diamond and The Last King of Scotland. Both were well done (according to my apparent uninformed, Hollywooded, commercialized standards). I thought DiCaprio’s role in Blood Diamond was played excellent and many of the one-line generalities that outsiders may think as cliché spoke truth to me from my time in Africa and my conversations with the Sierra Leonean’s on our contract. And yes, I think his Rhodesian/Zimbabwean accent was spot-on based on the numerous Zimbabwean’s we have working with us.

The second flick, The Last King of Scotland, was about a Ugandian warlord in the 70’s, played brilliantly (I hate using that word, but it holds true in this case) by Forest Whitaker. It’s more of an independent flick, but it really dives into the mentality of abusive, misleading, self-centered, African power that you so often find leading any war torn African country.

I took a flight back through Dubai into Khartoum and I must admit even after spending a year in the Middle East/Africa, I still find myself battling with mild xenophobia during the initial travel, being flooded with scores of smells and regional attitude from Chinese, Indian, and Middle Easterners, among others as I navigate the airports and aircraft. There’s something about leaving the comfort of your own backyard that still gets to me, even after being seasoned. Or maybe it’s the crying babies in the row ahead that sets the initial tone of the trip.

I hashed that out with a couple cold Kilkenny’s at the Irish Village in Dubai and then arrived in Khartoum to a swarm of traditionally dressed Arabs, men robed in white garments, women in floral veils and pungent purfume, arms filled with sack luggage, all pushing in one failed attempt at a line to get through the airports lone carry-on screening machine, aimed to detect illegal incoming alcohol and banter.

Upon leaving the airport I was swarmed with all the family members of these travelers, having to push through tiny passageways of people, feeling somewhat comparable to a mix between a red carpet entrance and the crowds at a packed Arabian rock concert.

Turns out the mass number of Arab travelers at the airport was due to their return from Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage taken to Mecca, in this case during the second religious holiday of Eid.

I’ve started a book, The Zanzibar Chest, which I highly recommend for any adventurist. It’s the story of a British journalist, born in Africa who’s compelled to remain on the continent, roaming around for Reuters news agency during all the crisis of the 90’s. Fascinating writing and insight, among which several paragraphs have stood out:

“What do you need to start a guerrilla war?” my friend Buchizya once asked the Marxist Congolese rebel leader Laurent-Desire Kabila.

“Ten Thousand dollars and a satellite phone,” replied Kabila. “You use the dollars to recruit enough fighters to raid the local police stations for their guns. The phone you use to call the world’s press after the attack.”

“Editorial interest in foreign news had been declining for years across the board. The wags used to say that as far as a Western Editor was concerned, the death of a single white American equaled five Israelis, fifty Bosnian Muslims, or fifty thousand Africans.”

“Back on the plains of the Bati Dad sat down by himself and wrote:

The camps lie broken down on hill and plain,
Skulls, bones, and horns remain,
No shouts, no songs of fighting, or of love,
But from the bare thorn tree above,
So sadly calls the mourning dove….
Was this your raveged land,
The work of God, or was it Man’s own hand?

For me this just about sums up what happened all over Africa in the twentieth century.”

It’s a good book for which I’ll probably read several times. It’s makes me want to write more often.

Sometimes I think that the more time I spend outside of the US, the more unmeaningful holidays will become as they can be skipped to easily and you can forget to recogize its historical and/or personal importance. I enjoy holidays so was grateful when the company agreed to offer a formal celebration.

This one lived up to domestic standards with an international flair. I had to work most of the day but took the latter part of the afternoon off. We played the UN in cricket, the game seemingly similar but utterly different than baseball, where matches can last six hours a day for up to five days, and high tea is commonplace (our spectators substituted a darker liquid). Our team was made mostly of a South African burly crew who looked more appropriate for a rugby match meant for over-the-hill has-been’ers, compared to our opponents who were mostly Indian and very seasoned in their cricket skills.

I found myself umpiring (in our rules the batting team umpires their own at bats) during the first inning, where I asked more questions than made calls. And when it was my turn to bat I really wanted to take a cut like in baseball, but found, like in golf, that was a big mistake. When I pitched (bowled, as shown in the pic above) the ball (a leather bound cork centered hard ball), it was done by throwing strait overhand in an awkward manner which makes your shoulder joints hyperextend in abnormal directions strait above your head. I couldn’t aim very well, and if it wasn’t for the damn good batter (who managed to knock my bowls into oblivion), I would have hit him 4 or 5 times. Anyway, they killed us. No rematch planned yet. But it was fun.

In the early evening the company offered up a big BBQ/Braai to officially celebrate. Excellent food was cooked and we ate like kings, which is a rarity. No turkeys on this day, those are hard to find, instead opting for the Sudanese turkey, roasted sheep. We ‘halal’ed the sheep, (killed by cutting the throat) and spit spun two on an open fire which led to surprisingly good eats.

In an awkwardly appropriate moment of the evening, one of our Ghanian employees stood up and gave his thanks, expressing his appreciation with a native tongued accent so strong we just nodded and toasted and drank, knowing what came out was probably heartfelt. He then led his brethren into local dances and a circle formed that pulsed with the beat of the Zimbabwean tribal music playing in the background. It would have been fun to join but it was all large African men and I thought it best to remain a witness and BS with the new Swedish medical team, among others, in country.

Good day all around.

We had a new pet around camp for awhile (click and take a look). We caught her during movie night. She came out to nestle up to the speakers’ vibrations. Truth be told, I’m jittery around these bitches (excuse the language). I don’t know, maybe, it’s the umteen legs, the cockyness in their swagger, or just the tail full of fire. I spotted it watching our movie out in the open with 15 or so other folks and got a little nervous. (Due to the range of critters that come out during movie night, I now sit on my feet.) I went to get a flashlight and happen to tell my colleague, a Steve Irwin wannabe, who immediately joined in on the hunt. We went over to the speakers together; I shined the light and he grabbed it with a set of bbq tongs. He put her in a can, then proceeded to bobble the can and pretend drop it on my foot (in front of the movie go-ers), in which case I did an immediate knee jerk, high stepping yelp…only to be immediately relieved when I realized he was ‘kidding’. Moments later I had all intentions to restart my heart and punch him in the face for that little stunt but everyone was laughing at me so I just evil-eyed him and faked-laughed back.

Later the next day, as boys will be boys, I went hunting for a little frog to see if they might consummate. I was kind of right, in the ominous way you might think… stealthy, vicious and swift. The scorpion could have been the janjaweed and the frog a local woman.

We’ll that’s kind of wrong. I guess this whole situation is kinda wrong. ‘But it just felt so right.’  You know what I just realized, after the whole ordeal we let her go right over the fence to our compound, and she was very pregnant….

I’ve now got the ‘Seen Egypt as a Tourist’ pics for the scrap book.  Clicking will enlarge.

I leave for my break tomorrow and as normal in leaving before trips, the day is always cramped, stressful, and hectic. Inevitably, you never finish everything you want to accomplish before leaving so you just do your best. Turning over all my responsibilities at the drop of a dime, while a thing of regular occurrence on a contract, makes you feel dizzy and underwater. Regardless, I received two positive signs of good things to come, one of them actually drew such a positive reaction from me that during an ear to ear grin of discovery, I actually inadvertently blurted out the absurdly toddler phrase, “OH BOY!”

My first sign didn’t start out so positive. I was finishing lunch in the mess hall and walked out to head back to the car. I looked over and people were running in all directions. I saw smoke billowing from the adjacent building. It was the laundry room and it was on fire. The first thing that blurted out of my mouth into the smoke filled wind was not, “Is everyone OK?” or “How can I help put the fire out?”, but more appropriately, “Oh S**T, all my clothes are in there!!!” I had put them in the day before, at least 75% of what I owed down here, to clean before my trip. I knew they were gone, and if not, smoke infested beyond salvage. So for the rest of the day I figured I would be buying new clothes when I arrived in Budapest.

The fire was put out shortly after. A local cleaning lady had left the iron face down on the counter, plugged in and on, and had taken a nap. (It’s Sudan; it’s just not surprising anymore.) She had to be treated for smoke inhalation. The place didn’t burn down, but the building did take a beating.

After work, I went over to check if any of my clothes were still alive. I walked around the mess and couldn’t find any trace. My hopes sunk deeper until I looked and saw the lone dryer sitting untouched in the corner. I went over to open it, thinking, ‘this would be some luck’. Wouldn’t you know my clothes were in the dryer, washed and dry, and bounty fresh. The sealed drier had protected them from the smoke and fire. Yes, indeed.

My second sign of fortuity came as I was cleaning out my desk drawer and found a stray $100 bill hiding in the back. I keep my per diem (and poker winnings) elsewhere so this one I had not expected. (Insert absurdly toddler phrase here.)

So I’m off tomorrow for my trip, flying in a mix of aircraft (Sudan Air, Lufthansa, Turkish Airlines, EgyptAir) (paid in full by the company – I guess I get the return by the quality of aircraft), as I circle Eastern Europe, The (Northwest) Middle East, and Northern Africa on this leave. (Budapest, Bucharest, Istanbul, Cairo, Sharm el Shiek).

As a farewell, to keep me grounded in these journeys (and offer another Sudanese commonplace absurdity) there was huge buzz today in El Fasher and on our radios about the arrest of an American. Apparently, a boy, an 18 year old boy, got the itch to come see what war and poverty was all about first hand. Probably a little bit more off beat than Jill Carroll, but still a little whack, he decided that he would make a trip into Chad, then border hop into Sudan, make some personal introductions with the involved parties, and have an adventure. Who knows how he even got from America into Chad on his own but I suppose he was one of the few determined.

He was first picked up by the SLA inside the Sudan border, who promptly took his laptop, GPS, phone, camera, luggage, the whole shebang, after extensive close door sessions. They were kind enough to drop him off with the African Union, who nursed him somewhat back to health. He then made his way on a military aircraft into El Fasher (where I am), but had an unfortunate waiting party at the airport. He was swiftly packed into the back of a highly armed Sudanese Government pickup truck and taken into oblivion. (Makings of a setup – they knew he was coming) Grounds of charge, I don’t know, being stupid? Not having a Sudan visa (illegal entry into the country)? Spying (they will most definitely claim.) This guy is screwed. A year ago, there was a European caught doing the same thing here (meandering around Darfur illegally with no real reason) and he got off lucky – a two year prison sentence in the middle of ReallyWishIWasn’tHere, Sudan. US embassy efforts to claim the young lad have so far been unsuccessful.

Oh well, lesson – don’t make those big mistakes…

So here are a few pics, not really encompassing, but something to go on for the text impaired.

For those who remember the post mentioning Spanner, our friendly

survivor, here he is, distinct curly tail and all.